1.4.2-Pilferingapples
Brick!club Bk.1 Vol. 4 Ch.2: A Sketch of Two Equivocal Faces Or, First Sketch of Two Mean Figures, which…is not really the same! Or, Naming Conventions Are All About EnjolrasThe French Revolution! I’m…sure more Frenchish, or historically knowledgeable, people than me will have a lot to say about this one? Because I’ve been drumming my skull for a while on it and don’t have much at all. Except that I’m glad Hugo acknowledges Stupid Naming Trends are not limited to the lower classes. And then tries to prove they indicate vast social movement! Which..I sort of agree with? (and of course there’s more insulting women who read lit aimed at women. Classy, Hugo. Classy. Makes me want to go read a romance.) Commentary Gascon-en-exile I did sort of gloss over this with Myriel because we got an entire livre dedicated to characterizing the guy, but I suppose I ought to come out and say now that, in general, I don’t particularly care for how Hugo handles some of his characterizations. In fiction it’s usually best if characters are revealed gradually through their words and actions (and those of other characters in relation to them). Hugo does that sometimes - see Myriel, and also the fairly natural initial characterizations of Valjean and Fantine - but here we just get a big information drop that adds much to what we saw in the last chapter but also stops the plot and overall feels rather forced. Hmm, I wonder if there’s any other chapters coming up that consist of Hugo stopping the plot to throw a bunch of information about new characters our way, some of which will never actually appear outside said chapters? *cough*Les Amis*cough* We’ve already heard Hugo’s invective against bad romance novels (and just like earlier in the century and even today, there’s considered first and foremost reading for women) and we’ll get ample demonstrations of Thénardier’s duplicity, avarice, and comical incompetence with a variety of skills, so is it really necessary to bring it all up here? Naming conventions being an equalizer aside, I’m not quite sure what Hugo is saying about the Thénardiers’ social class, what he calls a “''classe bâtarde''." The implication is that they’re made up of the worst of the middle and lower classes - either disgraced bourgeois or social climbers, neither of which are generally considered in a positive light. Perhaps the Thénardiers are so reprehensible that they need to be in a class of their own or something. Doeskin-pantaloons (reply to Gascon-en-exile) Regarding your thoughts on characterisation: After years of being taught ‘show-don’t-tell’, I’m going to come out and admit that I actually really like the way Hugo does characterisation - even though it should be really really wrong. I think that in such an ambitious work, he honestly wouldn’t have time to characterise everyone through action and speech. I mean, take Les Amis, for example. They don’t get much screen time, but we know they’re amazing because Hugo spent a page detailing each of their lives. And there really isn’t any other way he could have fitted the kind of backstory he did into the novel, I don’t think. Pilferingapples (reply to Gascon-en-exile) I give A Group Which Almost Became Historic a lot of slack, though, because Hugo’s obviously not just describing the Amis, but talking about a lot of other ideas through them, and it’s concepts he doesn’t get into much outside that chapter. And then we barely see the Amis again because no one had invented the concept of marketable breakout characters so he doesn’t really discuss their characters in that much detail either. But we are gonna hear about Thenardier again a LOT , soon, and for the rest of the novel, so this feels excessive. To me the whole in-between social class seems like a calling out of the social conventions that lock people into set places? Like, here’s these people who are too smart or lucky to slip all the way through the cracks, but there’s no way for them to climb, so they get locked into this in-between space where all the skills and smarts that might have saved them turn sour and help make them more successful in bitterness. But I have NO idea if that’s what Hugo meant. Guinevak (reply to Pilferingapples' reply) No, I think that’s pretty much exactly what he meant. It’s not so much that they’re in a separate class because they’re reprehensible as that they are reprehensible because they don’t fit in either class. It seems likely that Madame, at least, might not have been a terrible person if her situation was less precarious and ambiguous (and my extremely tl;dr thoughts on Madame can wait for another day); we’ll see it again later with Eponine, who’s so proud of her literacy, who tells Marius “We haven’t always been what we are now”. Pilferingapples (reply to Guinevak's reply) Oh, I’m really looking forward to your Thenardier Opinions! Please do share! And thanks for explaining this so much better than I did, that”s exactly how I feel about the in-between class thing. :) Guinevak (reply to Pilferingapples' reply) :D You’re welcome! Succinct is my middle name. Tumblr User Succinct Guinevak. And I fully intend to do The Big Madame Thenardier Post! but uh. I have a lot of feels. A lot a lot. Possibly it will be ready by the time she shows up again